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Favorite documentary


MarciaBrady

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Nothing too deep or political or anything with me. I'm pretty partial to those mini-series type documentaries that Discovery does. Blue Planet, Planet Earth, Life...All of those. And I've actually got Frozen Planet on right now, & it's pretty cool, too! I just think it's cool to watch the different animals & how they behave & stuff. I end up cracking up at the funny things they do a lot of the time. Like tonight with the penguins stealing stones from each others' nests as soon as one would turn his back! :lol:

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I think that my all-time fave is "Le Chagrin et La Pitié" (translated title: the Sorrow and the Pity), a black and white 1969 doc. from France about the town of Clermond-Ferrand and how it lived under the Occupation and how it dealt with the aftermath. It's very long but worth it, with many interviewees such as Anthony Eden (whose French speaking was excellent), Christian de la Maizière (who had joined the SS Légion Charlemagne and fought on the Russian Front and in Berlin during the last days of the Reich), members of the FFL, members of the FCP, Solange (a woman who was punished for "horizontal collaboration" by having her head shaved), a soldier who was a POW in Germany, among others...

It was so controversial when it came out that for 20 years various French Presidents refused it to be shown on tv.

Others that I love are "Planet Earth" from the BBC, "Le Confort et l'Indifférence" (a doc. by Denys Arcand on the 1980 Québec referendum), "Roger and Me" which is the only M.Moore doc. that I really like, "Shoah" by Claude Lanzman (good thing it's on youtube, its subject matter and length makes it so that I couldn't watch it in one sitting).

Speaking of Claude Lanzman, as anyone here seen his first documentary "Pourquoi Israel?" (Why Israel?), made in 1973 in the months preceeding the Y.K. war? I heard it's great, an interesting look at the different people that made Israel in the early 70s.

ETA: "Baghad Metal" about heavy metal in Iraq and in the Arab world, "Paradise Lost" about the WM3, one that I can't remember the tile is about street people that live in the tunnels of the NYC subway. What's cool about it is that the director used the people he filmed about as his film crew on it, and one of them became so good at doing sound that he ended up hiring him fulltime afterwards. It is a 2001 release.

"Le Rafiot de l'Enfer" about a tug-boat ferry that sails the Congo river with 15X more people on it than allowed, it left one month after the original departure dates, and last but not least it's the only way most people can go from that town to the Congolese capital. One man was on his way for a funeral; I think he didn't make it on time. I'm so used to my 1st world spoiled-brat standards of living that I was flabbergasted by what I saw in that film last week. It's only 1hr long, available on Dailymotion. I think it was a French translation from a BBC series, "the world's deadliest roads" or something.

Ok, one last one: "Number 27" about a scandal in the 1930s Hollywood film industry. MGM threw a party for its distributors and hired dancers as hostess. One distributor raped a dancer; amazingly she pressed charges, but then the studios, the DA and her own mother try to hush the whole thing. I was amazed to have never heard of that scandal, and I saw the doc online. The doc is so-so but I recommend it. I think that the girl's name was Virginia Graham. google her name to find the film and a story on what happened that was in Vanity Fair, in 2006 or so.

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The thing I liked about Bowling for Columbine (besides the awesome animation by Trey Parker and Matt Stone) was that after watching 2 seasons of The Awful Truth where Michael Moore staged all these stunts and basically got nowhere...

KMART STOPPED SELLING BULLETS FOR HANDGUNS! I don't know if it would hold up if I watched it again, but I remember grinning over that in the theater.

While I wanted to like This Film is Not Yet Rated, my final reaction when it was over was just meh. To me there was about 25 minutes of interesting points, and then it was otherwise an excuse to show a bunch of dirty video clips.

There was a special on CurrentTV called 50 Documentaries to See Before You Die. From that list, the ones I've seen and really liked that haven't been mentioned are:

The Thin Blue Line and The War Room (you have to like James Carville for this one.) And if you like history, The Fog of War is interesting.

Also, the one that won the Oscar the year Hoop Dreams came out, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision is really good.

I'll stop, but let's just say, I watch a lot of documentaries.

Moore lost me when he started claiming that people in Toronto don't lock their doors.

Look, I appreciate the love and the attempt to make us look utopian, but my door is definitely locked! It made me wonder what else may be distorted....

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Moore lost me when he started claiming that people in Toronto don't lock their doors.

Look, I appreciate the love and the attempt to make us look utopian, but my door is definitely locked! It made me wonder what else may be distorted....

Yeah no kidding! No one keeps their doors unlocked where I live either. Found that weird.

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I don't have a favourite, but I also recommend 'Spellbound' and 'King of Kong'; I found them both really interesting.

'The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive' is depressing, but it probably should be, given its topic.

I anti-recommend 'The Business of Being Born', on account of I was so, so looking forward to it, and it was basically 'all doctors want to do caesareans and painkillers mean you're not a real mother who's had a real birth' stuff. :?

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I love watching documentaries, especially ones that are about history. And I'm looking for some new suggestions. What is your favorite documentary?

My favorite is Not For Ourselves Alone. It's about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and their contributions to the suffrage movement.

My favourite is Être et Avoir, a documentary about a small rural school in France.

I wish for all children to have a teacher like George Lopez

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Babies is an awesome documentary. I also enjoyed Planet Earth.

Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story is also interesting, if you like Eddie Izzard. ;-)

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It's a few years old, but I really enjoyed "American Experience: We Shall Remain". Follows Native American history from the first pilgrims to the stand-off at Wounded Knee. You can watch all the episodes at Netflix.

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This is a great thread. I've made a list of documentaries I want to view over my summer break. Right now I'm showing snippets of the documentary, Serving Life, to my students. It's about men in Angola prison who are seeking redemption for their crimes and are workers in the prison's hospice program.

http://www.oprah.com/own-doc-club/Serving-Life-Trailer

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My favorites are

Jesus Camp

Stevie

Mad Hot Ballroom

The Paradise Lost trilogy

Word Wars

My Flesh and Blood

Body of War

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Supersize Me

-Very entertaining, and Morgan Spurlock is a hoot! (I highly recommend his 30 Days series)

Waiting for Superman

-This film made me and my mother bawl. I'm about to finish up a degree in secondary science education and my professors told all of us to watch this (a friend of mine already teaching said that the superintendent of schools in her corporation said not to watch it because it was propaganda). My mom watched it with me and could not believe what she was seeing. She asked me if this truly was the reality kids faced and I cited to her instances in my own education that backed up their claims (such as my history teachers just putting on a movie every day to teach us). Brilliant film.

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Anything by Louis Theroux.

Me too. The day I found out he was married, I died a little inside. Have you read his book?

I love born into brothels, although it raises a couple of questions. It's about children of sex workers in an Indian slum. Very interesting

I'm going to anti recommend waiting for superman. I severely dislike that film. Is divisive, creates a false us versus them situation, vilifies teachers and unions, oversimplifies complex issues and omits key data to indicate charter schools as a silver bullet, without addressing the underlying issues.

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I'm not much of a 'watcher,' so there's not a lot to choose from, but I did like Bill Maher's Religulous. I would like to see Jesus Camp in its entirety one of these days.

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I highly recommend "Requiem for Detroit" if you'd like to see how such a prosperous city became so very not.

As a Detroiter, I think that would be too depressing for me. :(

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Freeheld

trailer at http://www.freeheld.com/

NJ detective wanted to leave her pension to her lesbian partner. NJ had passed a law allowing counties to allow it (county by county) and Ocean County said no. (Now NJ has civil unions. yay - little "y" on purpose.)

The short film (30 minutes?) follows the fight in the last few months of Laurel's life as basically the whole county said, "Gah, give it to her already" and the elected Freeholders said, "Nanny nanny boo boo, you can't make us." Dicks.

I was at the Freeholder meetings. (I'm in a few scenes, in the audience.) It was so frustrating to be there, thinking, "This is NJ. This is a blue state. It's 2006. Holy crap."

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It's hard to pick a favorite documentary, mainly cause I don't remember the names of most of them.

I did love the Ken Burns Civil War series, and anything by David Attenborough tends to be great quality.

The lack of quality history documentaries makes me sad. The History Chanel is basically the Hitler channel, and historical biographies tend to be made into soap operas. There have been some fantastic books published about 18th/ 19th century Europe in the last ten years or so, and so very few decent television adaptions.

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Oh, another one: "Dreamer Deceiver", a 1990 doc. about the trial that JUDAS PRIEST and their label CBS were involved in Reno, NV. They got sued by a dumb fuck who was part of a suicide pact with his friend. Friend died, he survied a shotgun blast through his own face (and we see him, what a nightmarely sight he is). The survivor got goaded on by his fundie parents and the fundie parents of his late friend and they sued the band saying their album "Stained Class" had subliminal messages that pushed them to kill themselves in the yard of a church in 1985. The survivor ended up dying 3 yrs after, and what surprised the heck out of me was that when he died he left a 1 yr-old daughter.

It was en "en banc" trial and I'm glad that at the end the judge rules in JUDAS PRIEST's (one of my fave bands, btw) favour.

The doc. didn't age that well, but the interviews are revealing and we see parts of the actual trial proceedings. The whole thing is up on youtube.

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Babies is an awesome documentary. I also enjoyed Planet Earth.

Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story is also interesting, if you like Eddie Izzard. ;-)

I just watched Babies and was pretty disappointed. It was like a string of youtube videos. 80 minutes of "Look! Cute baby!" You get the same impact watching the clips that accompany the closing credits.

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I just watched an adorable documentary called Please Vote For Me (on Netflix). It's about a third grade class in China that gets to elect their own class monitor out of 3 candidates nominated by the faculty. The kids have no idea what democracy means or what voting is, and the candidates have to campaign during lunchtime, perform in a talent show, participate in debates, and give a prepared speech. It gets pretty intense! And it is really insightful, as someone who was raised on democracy and voting, to see how it plays out with children experiencing it for the first time. Plus the kids are super adorbs.

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